LOVE IS FEARLESS

• Notice their needs and do what is in our power and capacity to meet those needs so that the one we love can live in truth, and can experience personal growth and emotional healing.
• Intentionally build a relationship of trust with the person we care about so they will let us love them.

• Recognize our own needs and let God and others love me so I can live in truth and I can participate in my own maturity and my own healing.
• Be willing to trust others in the places I am vulnerable—places like unresolved issues, immature habits, ways of relating I learned in survival mode…

Hope is soul food. We can live without it for a few days or maybe a few weeks, but living without it for very long causes us to be careless about life, experience depression, feel overwhelmed by shame, and isolate ourselves in the very moments we need connection in healthy relationships. Faithful love meets our God-given need for trust and offers us hope. Faithful love reminds us we are not alone, especially when we're experiencing struggle. Living with hope, we experience emotional elasticity. We bounce back from hard times and recognize that struggle is a normal part of life on this planet. When we learn to count on the faithful love of God and others, we heal and mature. We don't get stuck in negative emotions. We remember, "There is great hope!" In this episode, Doug and I (Janet) talk about trading our moral compass for a truth compass, and we offer these takeaways: 1. God knew the knowledge of good and evil would be a slippery slope that led to confusion, self-righteousness, pride, and prioritizing behavior and performance above intimacy in relationships. He never wanted that for us. Living with a truth compass, instead of a moral compass, keeps me intimate with God. 2. There is never a time when God does not love me as much as He is going to love me. 3. There's a difference between knowing and experiencing and it's important. It's the difference between knowing your Heavenly Father loves you and experiencing His embrace when you're at the place you need Him most. The more we experience love in our human relationships, the more fluent we can become in experiencing God's love, too. We talk about a FREE RESOURCE available on my website and recommend these books: THE CURE by John Lynch, Bruce McNichol, and Bill Thrall EDUCATION BY DESIGN, NOT DEFAULT by Janet Newberry

1. "I'm not a fixer or a judge, I'm a child of God. God is love, so I'm a lover, too."
2. What if today I consider what people need rather than what I have to say? And then I can watch for trust to roll out a red carpet to welcome the transformation that will come.
3. Since significance is a God-given need, if this need is not met with affirmation in healthy relationships, this need will be met with power in toxic relationships.

1. Permission almost always happens in a conversation. It's one reason the habit of mature conversations is a big deal.
2. Protection often happens in the way we create the environment we live in. Love creates an environment for growth.
3. We often don't think of protection as love. But when we trust it and begin to experience freedom, instead of bondage, we will recognize that we have loved.

1. When we live in a culture that offers us habits of dis-ease instead of habits of health, and that offers us a lifestyle that keeps us vulnerable, we may never experience the thrill of healing and overcoming and growing stronger.
2. Punishment is about behavior and making someone pay for what's been done in the past. Discipline is corrective love and is about the person and helping them move forward, trusting the truth of who God says they are.
3. A diagnosis is not an identity.

1. God is "parenting" me and one of His objectives is to free my life. When I am free, I am free to love others in the same ways God loves me.
2. As spouses, parents, and friends, we can be mindful of the times when it is natural for our family members and friends to feel fear because of a difficult circumstance or season. We can stay in touch to protect them from lies and shame.
3. There is never a time when God is not committed to us. There is never a time when we have to question His passion for us or His dependability.

1. Love is a process of meeting needs. Having our needs met is the way we experience another's love in our everyday lives.
2. If we are compliant, trying to earn love, there is a great risk of becoming a victim of performance-obsessed relationships. I will no longer be willing to take responsibility for my choices and I will hold those in authority responsible for who I am becoming.
3. Most of our non-clinical problems in this life are a direct result of not experiencing love.

1. "Stick with the ones who make you feel important. You've got one shot at this life and if the people who were meant to teach you about your value didn't, then find those who can."
2. "Your life is meant to be lived. Your relationships are meant to reflect love and safe connection."
3. "If you don't have access to a person, find words. Find books, find quotes, find things that make something in your feel important enough to keep looking for more."

1. "When we change the way we think, we change the way we live our lives." Dr. Caroline Leaf
2. Spending time with people who see you the way God sees you and who speak to you truthfully the way God does, heals our wounded attachment styles because it is the experiences we've had with people who don't see us truthfully that have wounded us.
3. To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear. (Unknown)

ZEALOUS is an adjective that describes someone who is passionate, fierce, and wholehearted. In a culture of love, we're invited to be zealous for the whole truth. That's very different from simply wanting to be right.

In a culture of fear, we can become apathetic and indifferent to the whole truth in our quest to keep our place in the invisible hierarchy, or because we're afraid of crossing the line in the sand between us and them.

In this episode, we talk about parenting, church, divorce, masks, and a few other topics that are controversial if we have to be simply "right," instead of on a journey to discover the whole truth and build a culture of love.

Join us in the transformative conversation and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• If we are on a journey of desiring to discover the whole truth, the journey will be trustworthy, even though we'll believe some lies along the way. If we just want to be right (or popular or successful,) we'll find a place to belong, but our voices will only contribute to the divisive masses.
• The human brain is a rational organism, searching for evidence that matches what we believe. Parts of the whole truth divide us because bits and pieces of right and wrong polarize us in the ways our brains fight against the seemingly incongruent whole truth.
• Love doesn't make truth the opposite of wrong. Love invites me to understand that what is wrong is often a part of the whole true story. Fear teaches us to hide what's wrong, even if it means fighting against what is good.

JOIN the LOVE IS FEARLESS cause by visiting our website at www.loveisfearless.com

Follow this link to make a donation to support this mission of building cultures of love around the world. https://www.loveisfearless.com/helpus

Janet's book explores fresh ideas that contribute to the whole truth about education. If your children are going to be doing school at home this year, this book offers practical ideas for working together in love, instead of fear. Buy it on Amazon now. https://smile.amazon.com/Education-Design-Not-Default-Fearless/dp/057840835X/

Together, there is great hope.